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Christine Tran English 112B Unit of Study: Poetries in Different Perspectives There are many students who find analyzing poems very difficult. Since students find it difficult, they will become bored and intimidated by poetry. I want to teach students an easier way to explicate and understand poetry. I want to help them love poetry and find pleasure in reading poetry voluntarily rather than students only reading poetry when they are in a forced environment. My goal is to help my students understand the depths and meaning of the poems, explicate and analyze the poem and picking out literary devices that the poet uses.
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe Images
My center piece will be a book of many poetries call The Raven: Tales and Poems by Edgar Allan Poe. I want to use this as my center piece because I want to teach students Poe’s works that demonstrate goth theme, dark imageries and his astonishing powers and imaginations exploring a human’s darkest corners of the mind. I really think Poe’s works is powerful in a very eerie way. It is scary, yet hard not to keep on reading. Today, many young adults struggle through depression and having anxiety. Whether it is because of school, family or social gatherings, many young adults have trouble coping their depression and anxiety issues. I believe Poe’s works can grab students’ attention and make become more expressive about their issues and even become interested in reading poetry voluntarily too. In addition, Poe’s works are so powerful that it is easy to depict imageries and other literary devices which can help them better understand poems. Since it will be easy to pick out these devices, students will be able to understand the meaning of Poe’s poems. Tran 2
For example, I will be pulling out three poems from The Raven: Tales and Poems by Edgar Allan Poe for my unit of study: “Annabelle Lee”, “Ulalame” and “The Raven” all written by Edgar Allan Poe.
Annabelle Lee by Edgar Allan Poe Image Ulalame by Egar Allan Poe Image
(activities on how I will teach to the lessons)***
Activity 1 For the first two poems, I will ask students to compare and contrast both poems. I will ask my students to read each poem carefully. Then, I will ask them to jot down what their own first thoughts and impressions are. We will then go around and quickly share their first thoughts and impressions of the two poems. Next, I will ask them to choose one out of the two and try to explicate by stanzas or sections. They will write down what they think each sections of the poem means. What are some things the poet wants you to see and feel? How is this important? Why is this significant that the poet wrote this? After finishing up a small lecture about Poe, I will introduce “Annabelle Lee” and “Ulalame” and together we will break down the poem into stanzas or sections and explicate them. By doing this, it will help students understand little by little instead of taking on the poem as a whole. In the poem, “Annabel Lee” written by Edgar Allen Poe we can see that he breaks down his poem in stanzas. Within those stanzas he uses rhymes, imagery, alliteration and repetition in this poem. For example, he starts off with a social class difference between the speaker and Annabel. If the speaker were of the same class, he would not have mentioned about the “highborn kinsmen” that took her to her grave and the image of the sea and the “kingdom” in which she lives. Moreover, Poe goes in depth more with his poem by the imagery, rhyme and alliteration he uses throughout his poem. For example, he utilizes the rhyming pattern of the “sea, "lee, me and sometimes we” alternating with each other throughout the line of the entire Tran 3 poem. Alliteration is easily spotted when Poe describes his obsessive love: “But our love it was stronger by far than the love… Of those who were older than we… Of many far wiser than we.” As a reader, we see that Poe emphasizing the “W” sound the fifth stanza. When speaking about the unfortunate death of Annabel, Poe says, “That the wind came out of the cloud by night… Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.” Poe here establishes the dark mood by using the alliterating and personifying the words: came, cloud, chilling, and killing which also illustrate repetition applied throughout most of the poem. The theme Poe attempts to portray is about a death of a beautiful woman. As Poe goes on in the poem, readers can feel a sense that Poe is in love with this woman. Even after her death, he retains her love for her. The way his love is for her is not just love, but he worships her too. Throughout the poem, there are repetitions that suggest that he is trying to grief over his lost. Annabel is clearly the main focus in this poem and the only thing Poe can think about to write. It is all about her. She was young, beautiful and was seen to be perfect for the other half. Although this poem focus on her, we do not know what she looks like, speak like, or anything at all. By doing this, Poe is symbolizing her as pure beauty and love that is hard and almost impractical to obtain. Her beauty and love almost seem to be too good to be true in ways where it feels impossible to grasp a hold on. As we go on to read, we learn bits and hints of who Annabel is. We learn that she is a “maiden whom you may know”. Still, she seems more like a fantasy than a real person. Poe makes her into a person that she would only love him and have “no other thought”. At this part of Poe’s imagination, we should notice that he was only exaggerating. By doing that, his use of hyperbole is to throw readers off guard. As we continue reading on, we see that there are a sense of dark and scary acts taking action. With all his weird imaginations, he really traps this young girl and shut her in her tomb. In “Ulalame” Poe mainly focused on his lost love. This poem depicts various allusions and tone from the writer. The setting starts off as a “lonesome October”. Also, Poe mentioned how the weather seems to make October even more lonesome than it already is: “ashen and sober… leaves they were crisped and sere- the leaves they were withering and sere… it was the lonesome October” As a reader we can speculate the way Poe feels about October because of the death of his loved one he had lost. Poe’s “serious and sober” soul spoke in such a sad way that we can feel his emotions as well. His allusion helped us to be able to visualize his cheeks are still wet due to his tears. Although it has been a year since his loved one had died, it is obvious that he is still suffering from his lost. Through his pain and suffering for a whole year, he finds himself back to the exact day where he had buried her. For that reason, the title of this story, Ulalame illustrates a significant amount of importance. Ulalame ultimately symbolizes his sorrows for his lost. Poe embodies his poem through ancient Greek Psyche, corresponding to his subconscious mindset. Unlike the poem “Annabelle Lee” where Poe speaks about how he feels such a great love and attraction for Annabel, his tone in “Ulalame” is the total opposite. Poe presents himself in a subconscious mindset where he unknowingly returns to her graveyard. This shows that he is at his weakest stage compared to where he was in “Annabel Lee”, love-struck and obsessed. It is Tran 4 obvious that he is devastatingly sad. Poe illustrates this by showing decay and deterioration: “the leaves withering…” says a lot about the way he feels as he is blankly at her grave on the night of her burial. Using new criticism, readers can also track out an American gothic genre. From the “leaves withering” to his “praised” thoughts, Poe demonstrated American gothic genre by using his descriptive writing about the setting and demonstrating how he felt about his lost love. After explicating the two poems and comparing them with one another, I will ask how they feel about the poems now versus in the beginning.
Activity 2 In-class activity: To help them feel more comfortable and have more hands-on experience with poems, I will pass out a picture to every student and have them write a free verse poem based on that picture. Every student will create a poem based on that picture. When they are done, I will put them in groups of threes or fours to discuss and share their poems. This activity will help the students realize that although they were given one exact picture like one another, each poem they created themselves are perceive differently. Then, I will connect it back to Poe to show students that what they did is very similar to what Poe did in his works. Homework assignment: Then they will take home the in-class activity and write a one to two pages reflection on what they learned and how writing a poem can help young adults be more expressive toward their problems.
Activity 3
In-class activity: Some other work I will be incorporating into my unit of study is Adolescents in the Searching for Meaning: Tapping the Powerful Resource of Story by Mary Warner. I will be using chapter five: Poetry, Drama, Humor, and New Media. Although this chapter talks about other topics like drama, humor and new media, I will be focusing on the poetry section. I will use chapter five as my brief opening on poetry. I will briefly talk about what is poetry, how it is able to deliver its message to the reader and the meaning behind it. Then I will connect to my center piece: The Raven: Tales and Poems by Edgar Allan Poe. I will lecture a little history about Poe. I will focus on when he started writing, what and who inspired him to write and how his poems are significant to us today. Tran 5
I want to also incorporate some fun exercises like: passing out papers with rap lyrics from modern rap songs, poetry lines from some of today’s popular poet and some of Poe’s works. We will all vote together on which ones are poetry lines and rap lyrics. This will explain the connection between classic poems and modern-day rap lyrics. This will help them becomes more interest in poetry.
Concluding the Unit: The final will be composed of quotes from each poem we have discussed, and the student will identify the title, author and poetic devices used. Then they will compare and contrast the poems. The students must connect their ideas to the overall theme of the of poetries in different perspectives. (Connecting back to everyday young adult’s problems, what they learned about poems: Poetry is a gateway of speaking their mind freely, expressing themselves).
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Works Cited
“Annabel Lee.” Poetry Lovers' Page, www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/poe/annabel.html.
“COMPLETE COLLECTION OF POEMS BY EDGAR ALLAN POE: The Raven,
Alone, Annabel Lee, The Bells, Eldorado, Ulalume and More.” Poetry Lovers' Page, www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/poe/poe_ind.html.
Dabbs, Lisa. “Five Poetry Teaching Tips for New Teachers.” Edutopia, 18 Apr. 2013, www.edutopia.org/blog/poetry-teaching-tips-new-teachers-lisa-dabbs.
Giordano, Robert. “The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe.” Poestories, 1845, poestories.com/read/raven.
“Ulalume.” Poetry Lovers' Page, www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/poe/ulalume.html.
Warner, Mary L. Adolescents in the Search for Meaning: Tapping the Powerful Resource of Story. Scarecrow Press, 2006.